An inner-city school mobilizes to educate its children

Published 12:02 am, Friday, August 26, 2011

A small army of teachers, coaches, nurses and librarians descended on an unsuspecting West Side neighborhood one hot summer morning last week, determined to educate more children.

The faculty and staff at Ira Ogden Elementary School had gathered in the small cafeteria on Aug. 18, four days before school was to start. They'd expected 564 students to register for the school year, based on the previous year's count. But when Principal Graciela De La Garza had looked at the list the day before, she only found 442 names.

The implications for Ogden, which has an almost entirely Hispanic, economically disadvantaged student body, were clear. If the number didn't increase, some of the teachers would be moved to other elementary schools.

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After a brief ‘What do we do?' kind of discussion, the school's librarian, Dina Branford, who was standing, declared: “They need to be in school.” She said she was ready to knock on doors. Amid a chorus of approving murmurs, someone else said, “Let's divide them up.”

And so, before you knew it, 47 of the 52 employees of a tiny elementary school in the San Antonio Independent School District had fanned out into the surrounding neighborhood. Some drove and some walked, but they all knocked on doors, confronted snarling dogs, and left notes when no one answered.

Parents and grandparents responded with suspicion at first. Once they realized who was there, many expressed surprise and genuine gratitude. Miguel Rodriguez, a fourth-grade teacher, said one parent told him, “It really shows that you guys care.”

Some parents said they'd planned to register on the first day of school, which was Monday. Others said they couldn't afford all of the school supplies or the required khaki and white school uniforms. Others hadn't gotten the immunization shots required by law.

The Ogden emissaries referred those folks to a CentroMed clinic on South Zarzamora, which got a burst of new business. For every reason given, the school officials' answer was nearly always the same: Come on in, we'll figure it out.

De La Garza teamed up with the vice principal and brought back seven names, all from the same household. By the end of the morning, when the group reconvened in the cafeteria, they'd found 60 additional students. They exchanged high-fives, the school bought lunch for them from Jason's Deli, and they prepared to launch the school year with the kind of firecracker burst of energy that school officials dream about.

“I wish I had taken pictures,” said De La Garza, charged up by something she hadn't seen in 28 years as an educator. “And it was hot. And dogs, oh my goodness, there were dogs — and I'm petrified of dogs.”

As of Thursday morning, the enrollment had grown to 550 and was still climbing. That's not rare for any school at the start of the year, but in this case a crisis had been averted through a commando team effort.

There were other, less tangible benefits: a better relationship with the community; an overarching sense that not all of the problems of inner city schools are insurmountable.

“I just think it proves that if a school is committed to the community, things can get done,” De La Garza said over the high-energy din of students heading to lunch outside her office. “It's the school taking the initiative, not the community. Not waiting for things to happen, making things happen.”

Schools often shore up their enrollment at the beginning of the year, especially with funding levels diminishing and so much at stake. Staffers at J.T. Brackenridge Elementary School engaged in a similar effort, and other schools surely did, too.

De La Garza wants to do it again next year, this time wearing Ogden T-shirts to allay the initial suspicion. SAISD spokeswoman Leslie Price said the entire district might want to participate.

In our public battles over education, we often focus on the failures — dropouts, low test scores, or teachers who violate the law. Educators making the effort to prepare our children for the future, well, they don't always get as much notice.

Sometimes, though, the evidence suggests that, as hard a job as teaching is, the vast majority of those who make it their career do so because they want to make a difference in children's lives.